In Defense of Justin Bieber

Of all the many many objectionable things on the internet, and oh there are many, one has been bothering me quite a bit recently: Justin Bieber Memes.  For some reason, Facebook, Pinterest, Tumblr, etc, are all full of memes to the effect that Justin Bieber is a girl.  And that is ha ha ha hilarious.  Except it isn't.  This post would be more reader friendly if I linked to allllll those memes, but I don't want to support them, give them clicks, or make their authors think anyone cares.  If you want to see them, use the Google.

First, calling boys girls like that is a bad thing is just a really tired and ridiculous trope.  Some boys are more masculine and some are more feminine and there's nothing shameful or immoral or wrong about being either way.  There's nothing inherently bad about femininity for men or women.  It shocks me regularly that I have to explain that to otherwise educated and intelligent people (I'm looking at you, co-worker who thinks it's hilarious to mock men who play "girly" sports) that being a girl is just as good as being a boy, and being a boy who has some girly traits or a girl with some boyish traits is likewise hunky dory.  Seriously.  If you are not on board with that very simple proposition, just don't talk to me.  At all.  Thanks.

But, more importantly, Justin Bieber is an almost totally harmless teenage popstar.  He's not a horrible example for kids in terms of drugs, violence, etc.  He sings obnoxious catchy songs and lots of teenage and tweenage girls like him, probably because he is a little femme; he's cute, unthreatening and seems sweet.  If you hate his music, fine.  If you hate his fashion, fine.  If you want to mock his unbearable singing voice, carry on.  But mocking him because you think he is too girly is sending a bad message to girls and to boys: that boys have to be masculine to be valuable, and that being like a girl is a shameful, disgusting, bad thing.  And girls will wonder what is so incredibly awful about being, well, like them.

And I'm here to say there is absolutely nothing wrong them.  Nothing at all.

If you really want to turn your internetly mockery against a popstar who is a shame to masculinity, may I direct your attention to Chris Brown?